Artist's Statement for body of work called Where Beauty Lies...

Artistic Statement ? Claudette Losier (LosiersArt)

?Where Beauty Lies??

?The artist knows that even though he has created something beautiful, it can be destroyed.  His real and innermost satisfaction is not in the object, but in the subject; that thing within him that penetrates the mystic splendor of Beauty itself.?  (Ernest Holmes pg 39)

One of my bodies of work explores the concept of Paradise as something sought after by modern society.  My search centres on gardens--as near as our own backyard and as far away as other continents or the imaginary garden in our consciousness.  It has been stated that each garden reflects our longing for spiritual peace--a tie with our primeordal beginnings.  It is in the beauty of nature where I find this spiritual peace from a homemade garden to a formal garden, from a tree to the vastness of Grand Canyon, from a rocky coast line to the calmness of a man made pond. 

Writers on Beauty have always connected beauty to the Divine.  In Dr. Wayne Dyer?s book ?Power of Intention? he quotes from Emily Dickson and John Keats(pg 51):  ?Beauty is not caused.  It is??  As you awaken to your divine nature, you?ll begin to appreciate beauty in everything you see, touch, and experience. John Keats states in his poem Ode on a Grecian Urn:  ?Beauty is truth, truth beauty.?  This means, of course, that the creative Spirit brings things into the world of boundaries to thrive and flourish and expand.  Life, truth, beauty.  These are all symbols for the same thing, an aspect of the God-force.?  My spiritual guru, Yogananda, in his book (page 1046) ?The Second Coming of Christ? defines it as:  ?Beauty is the harmonious manifestation of love; the perfection of love is bliss.?  This wisdom is the reason why I need to create through both paintings and gardening to have a sense of connection to beauty, to truth, to harmony and the God-force in me and to pass on that connection to others. 

Like Monet?s ?living canvas? in Giverny I am transforming my husband?s backyard into a site specific canvas of poppies, delphiniums, irises, lucifers, black eye suzies, stargazer lilies, roses, lavender, hostas, sedums and other perenials.  This passion for gardening started with my friend Marg Caswell introduced me to gardening in St. Catherines.  It has expanded to two living canvases with properties provided to me from my husband, Ron, to develop my creativity using plants in Stoney Creek and now in Hamilton.  The one in Stoney Creek may no longer exist except in my pictures, paintings and consciousness.  The garden in Hamilton is still under construction.

In ?Monet?s Passion? the author Elizabeth Murray describes Monet?s gardening ability as:  ?With such a trained eye for color relationships and the effects of light and atmosphere on color, he automatically employed the same principles he used to create his canvases.  He carefully arranged pure colors in the abstract form of flowering plants to create richly patterned textures and mood by contrasting or harmonizing color relationships.?  Like Monet, our garden provides me with an endless show of beautiful models to create art with colors and patterns completely different to Monet?s reflecting my own spiritual connection to what I am seeing.  My paintings lean towards capturing strong contrast between lights and darks and complimentary colours with an abandonement to patterns in nature.

I am also following in the footsteps of Georgia O?Keeffe.  Afred Knopf in his book ?Georgia O?Keeffe ? One Hundred Flowers?, he quotes from O?Keeffe her reasons for painting flowers to be:  ?When you take a flower in your hand and really look at it, it?s your world for the moment.  I want to give that world to someone else.  Most people in the city rush around so, they have no time to look at a flower.  I want them to see it whether they want to or not.?  In the summer of 2006 my mother-in-law observed me doing my walk about in our garden and commented that ?I was being hypnotized by the plants? and was not aware that she was there.  When I do this walk about I am in that ?world for the moment? and no place else and so like O?Keeffe I want to give that feeling to others.   This ?living canvas? is very important today living in a society with information overload and focus on materiality, one needs to escape to beauty and journey into nature to return to our centre the primordial garden/being.   As Keats puts it ?A thing of beauty is a joy forever.?